Mr. Mike's Mondo Video

This would probably lend itself more to a Bruno Mattei Show-style discussion of random segments than the traditional Snob format, but it's just so bizarre that I'd love to see Brad comment on it.

Once upon a time at NBC (1979), Michael O'Donoghue was the head writer for Saturday Night Live. He had joined the show when it started after being an editor for the National Lampoon andstarring on it's Radio Hour. He had a dark sense of humor which was shown perfectly through his segments as Mr. Mike, a creepy guy with dark glasses telling stories like, "The Little Engine that Died" to little Jody Foster. He was a strange person; he rarely had the lights on in his office, which was full of nude amputee pinups. The network had to constantly censor his sketches (the one presenting the head of NBC as Hitler didn't go over well), so goodness knows why they let him make his own special.

It was going to be a one weekend a month replacement for SNL, set up as a Mondo Cane spoof. The pilot (shot on video!) had most of SNL's stars at the time, such as Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Bill Murray, and Dan Aykroyd, and stars like Debbie Harry, though most roles ended up being about five seconds. With skits like a church that worships Hawaii 5-O star Jack Lord, a Dutch cat swimming school (which required an armed ASPCA guard), Dan Aykroyd's webbed feet, and one titled "American Women Love Creeps," NBC was horrified, vowed never to air it, and finally had an excuse to fire Mr. Mike.

It was picked up by New Line for distribution, which meant it needed to be padded to fit the 90 minute required runtime for a theatrical picture. 30 minutes of badly edited in found footage later, it was ready to be released. Expecting a quirky SNL movie, moviegoers were so shocked by how weird Mondo Video was that a ticket taker in Baltimore was pulled out of his booth and beaten up by a crowd angry that they couldn't get refunds. And so it fell into obscurity. The VHS release muted a performance by Sid Vicious (Sinatra's "My Way"!), leaving just a scrolling text explaining that Paul Anka has no sense of humor, though the original TV cut aired on Showtime back in the early days of cable. The DVD is even worse; it cut out the beginning on one of the segments!

I realize that the Snob hasn't done comedy yet, but it would be interesting to see his take on such a bizarre and controversial movie. It's like Kentucky Fried Movie by way of Mondo Erotico with a healty dose of Snuff/Bloodsucking Freaks-level anger. Here's a clip:

I never got to see Mr. Mike's Mondo Video. The video store I used to work at carried it, but unfortunately for me, i had no VHS player. I've seen a few mondo style films like the faces of death series, amazon women on the moon, and the kentucky fried movie.

I have seen other mixtapes such as robin bougie's retardotron I and II, lost and found video night, and a few others, but they don't have stuff that's shot specifically for the release. They're just collected clips from various other things.